IN STORE AT TAPI
cake and eat it. You can knock over your wine and half an hour later it will still be on the surface and you can calmly dab it away without it staining. When you show customers these things they’re just astonished,” he says demonstrating with water from the tap.
“I’ve been lucky when designing the store because I’ve been immersed in the industry for so many years. I’ve been to the shows and seen what people have done on their stands over the years and some of it stuck. We need to bring this into retailing and make it a more interesting journey.”
dominated the market in that world, it did so from a family oriented point of view. Eventually, however the shares will evaporate and at that stage it will turn into a partnership scheme where investors can get bonuses, he added.
“The warehouseman is just as important as I am because we all interact with the customer and we’ve got to make sure that we all do it the right way.” To these ends all new staff start their training with a pictorial book containing mission statements on the brand integrity. “If we have a decision to make, a moral one or whatever, we flick through there and ask if it fits with the brand guidelines that we set out in the beginning. It’s actually been a good compass, it keeps us facing north and heading in the right direction.”
All of the store founders were involved in the design aspect of the store and the main reason for this, says Martin, is that they all have a fantastic knowledge of what the customer wants. “On that regard I knew that they’d have insights that designers wouldn’t have about why things should be done a certain way.”
Every member of staff is considered equally important and even has the opportunity to buy shares in the company. “There’s pride in ownership and I’m such a believer in that if we’re all part of the same thing then we all walk in the same direction. This isn’t a fat cat mentality where just a few people make a lot of money, this is a family business. And the family doesn’t just extend to the name Harris; it extends to the people who actually want to come and work here.”
This attitude, according to Martin, stems from how Carpetright was run under the Harris name. Although it was a plc and
The company seems to be on track with the original plans to roll out 200 stores in the future and 50 this year. “We’re still only 12 weeks old and we’ve already got six stores,” Martin said when we met at the beginning of August. “We hope that people will feel very comfortable with the brand and so we’ll be able to go into shopping centres and people will see us and we’ll be front of mind when they’re thinking about a floor.”
“In just 12 weeks we’ve already got repeat customers which I think demonstrates that being honest and upfront, having integrity is working.”
www.tapi.co.uk 20 | Autumn 2015 Tomorrow’s Retail Floors
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